For those of you who haven’t been here since the beginning, please allow me introduce myself. I’m a guy who’s punching out early today because I’ve been married for exactly one year and I’m a guy whose life can be appropriately explained with one story. The two are connected. Discover how after the jump.  

CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
By MIKE CASAZZA

I’ve been married nearly two months, but there are times when walking down the aisle seems like just yesterday.

Maybe I’ve gotten lucky and can appreciate that cliche about how time flies. More likely, it’s because I’ve relived the day by telling this story so many times.

*     *     *

I stayed in a hotel the night before so as to not jinx the wedding. In retrospect, that seems ironic.

As I stepped off the elevator the next morning and headed for breakfast, my mother found me.

“Mike, I have some bad news. Erinn called and there are no flower petals for the flower girls,” she said. Erinn Exline was to become my wife in a few hours.

That small problem was a mere foreshadowing.

By 1:30 p.m., the eight groomsmen, my parents, the photographers and I were ready to make our way to the trolley bus we had hired to take us to the church. It was a short trip, and we shared stories about how we each had arrived at that day.

Our trolley load stepped into the church shortly before 2 p.m., right on schedule. The trolley left to pick up the bridesmaids, bride and her parents.

The trolley pulled into the driveway at our home, and the fun – um, chaos – began.

As it backed out of the driveway, the trolley clipped an overhead utility line, and the line became wedged under the roof of the trolley.

Unsure whether it was a power line or a telephone line, a few passengers freaked out. Literally.

“I’m freaking out!” one said as she fled the trolley.

The driver determined the wire was a phone line, and he worked to free the trolley by driving forward and backward.

Erinn’s father, Alan, who already was taking pictures, noticed the corner of the trolley’s roof had been bent back a bit.

The driver eventually freed the trolley and the show was back on the road, though it was now nearly 2:30 and the trolley was a good 20 minutes from the church.

The wedding was scheduled for 3 p.m.

*     *     *

The trolley rambled along W.Va. 705, a four-lane highway in Morgantown with a 50 mph speed limit.

Less than a mile down the road, there was a loud noise. Kind of like, say, metal tearing from metal and flapping on the ceiling of a trolley.

The force of the wind under the damaged trolley roof was too much, and a small tear became much larger – until the roof peeled back like a lid on a tin of sardines.

The trolley was unable to go on.

There were now eight bridesmaids, two parents, two flower girls, a photographer and a bride stranded on the side of a busy Morgantown road on what may have been the hottest and most humid day in August.

That, of course, does wonders for expensively prepared hair and makeup.

The driver and the bride’s father stepped out to examine the damage while a string of passersby slowed to gape.

Erinn gathered up her bridal skirts and hopped off the trolley to see for herself.

What she saw actually made her laugh. Briefly. That stopped when she realized she didn’t have a ride to the church and it was getting closer to 3 p.m.

*     *     *

Such fiascos aren’t a surprise to anyone in my family.

In fact, my cousin Patti Esposito from Texas drove by the stranded trolley and said to herself, “Wow, knowing Mike’s luck. . .” and then recognized its passengers. “Oh, my God, that’s Erinn.”

But there was one bit of good fortune. The trolley was stranded on a busy stretch of road that many of the wedding guests had to take to get to the church.

Longtime family friends Mike and Karen Clancy were the first to drive by. They stopped.

“I can take two,” Mike said.

Erinn realized it was going to take help from several people to get the bridal party to the church.

A pregnant bridesmaid and the two flower girls went with the Clancys. By the time they pulled away, three more cars had stopped, all occupied by my cousins.

Not long after, the pregnant bridesmaid’s husband pulled off the road, and another bridesmaid’s father was summoned to pick up Erinn. A perfect stranger even pulled over to help.

Erinn’s parents and one of my cousins ended up riding with that nice woman, whose identity we failed to learn. She was on her way home after visiting her husband in the hospital.

Others on the way to the wedding saw the broken-down trolley and innocently passed by because they never imagined it was Erinn and her crew.

Then there was my grandmother.

Her son and daughter-in-law give her a hard time for being habitually late. She was late again but right on time in recognizing the trolley and its stranded passengers.

“See,” she said. “I’m not that late.”

After about 10 minutes of chaos on the side of the road, everyone again was on the way to the wedding. Everyone, that is, except the trolley driver, who stayed behind with his cell phone and a prayer.

*     *     *

As 3 p.m. approached at the church, I realized I had not been instructed to conceal myself from the bride and her party as I’d been told I would.

Then my phone rang. It was the matron of honor, Jennelle Jones, still roadside.

“Mike,” she said, “I have some bad news.”

I would say I was speechless, but I managed to blurt out, “Jennelle, don’t start any stories like that, please.”

I had noticed people beginning to wonder and whisper, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t curious myself.

I needed a few minutes to compose myself before breaking the news to others involved with the wedding.

That was fun. Everyone was delighted to hear what had happened, not because the trolley passengers were safe and would be arriving shortly, but because my wedding had arrived with a predictable predicament.

In the meantime, many people in the church were speaking quietly amongst themselves and turning their heads toward the back of the church as if to say, “Are we going to have a wedding?”

I asked my groomsmen to tell people sitting in the back of the church what had happened and ask them to pass the story forward.

It was like a bad game of telephone. By the time the story reached the front of the church, there had been a disastrous accident with people strewn all over the road.

Whoops.

Finally, at 3:20, I was asked to hide because the bride had arrived.

No one told me she arrived in a pickup truck.

At least she made it. And if she could make it after all that, so can we.

Contact sportswriter Mike Casazza at mikec@dailymailwv.com or 319-1142.